Medieval Theology and the Natural Body

This is the first volume to be published by York Medieval Press, under the aegis of University of York's Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer, with the aim of promoting innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. It has a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre's belief that the future of medieval studies lies in areas in which its major disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. The attitudes towards the human body held by different branches of medieval theology are currently a major focus of scholarly attention. This first volume from York Medieval Press includes studies of the metaphor of man as head and woman as body, Abelard, women and Catharism, the female body as an impediment to ordination, women mystics, and the University of York's 1995 Quodlibet Lecture given by Eamon Duffy on the early iconography and `lives' of St Francis of Assisi. The new scholarly essays collected here explore ways in which the human body - a major focus of attention in recent work on literary theory and cultural studies -was treated by several branches of medieval theology; they are derived in the mainfrom a conference held at York in 1995, under the title `This Body of Death', together with further invited papers on the same theme. It includes the first of the Annual Quodlibet Lectures in medieval theology, Eamon Duffy's masterly study of the early iconography and `lives' of St Francis of Assisi. PETER BILLER is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ALCUIN BLAMIRES, DAVID LUSCOMBE, W.G. EAST, A.J. MINNIS, DYAN ELLIOTT, ROSALYNN VOADEN, EAMON DUFFY